Tag Archives: Road trip

After (quite?) a few days off from this business of putting up road trip blogs, I have decided to return to ATL with my experience at WORLD OF COKE. Which I like to call Coke Land. Ahem.

It has been a busy-feeling first couple of days at school but if I don’t do this now I don’t know when I will get these up and be able to continue with a few things I’ve done around Tallahassee. So here we gooooooo~

We arrived at World of Coke a little later in the day after visiting the Atlanta Botanical Gardens (which I still have more pictures from but will probably save because that post was just getting too long, unless you want to see them?)

Welcome to World of Coke!

When you first go in, those are the things you see, and there is a brief introduction followed by a video specially made for WORLD OF COCA COLA which encourages you to exercise, eat healthy, and drink coke in order to be happy in life.

Now, a bit of Coke history.

And here it is! What you’ve all been waiting for.. or at least what I was waiting for the whole time I was there. Unlimited soda-drinking till you feel full and sick and just want to leave. But it was great. 🙂

Coke supplied various four-sided tasting stations representing the different continent(ish) areas where different coke products are sold, all leading up to the MOST DELICIOUS COKE OF ALL. Original coke. ❤

But first, a little snapshot of the only Florida-related thing I found there:

Yay! And now, the tasting room!

My mom really liked the melon “Bibo”, which tastes like honeydew. I liked the yellow one which is just kind of tropical.

Now, you may ask, why such a focus on Beverly? I have never tasted a drink that I liked less than this. We thought it tasted like milky, watery, soapy sprite. I immediately had to go get a big drink of orange soda to get the taste out of my mouth. So if you know anyone who likes this, or anyone from Italy or who has tried this in some other fashion, please ask them, WHY?

I do not, for the life of me, know why they had doubles of some things for the same region. But I do know that they could not trick me into trying Inca Kola twice. Bleh. It was yellow. I was expecting traditional cola, but I guess they did warn me by spelling it with a K.

Now onto the coke!

And that seems like a good place to end it, with the free coke (included in your admission price) that you reach in a hole to grab from a rotating circle of coke bottles. 🙂

We made it to Tallahassee after spending a morning in Atlanta. Today we woke up in Tallahassee and toured around town…

I do have around 3 posts to upload, including our two stops in Atlanta (World of Coke and the Atlanta Botanical Garden) and also Alfred B. Maclay Gardens in Tallahassee. Stay tuned! It’s getting close to the beginning of school again for me so with my unpacking as well as getting ready for that I have been/will be very busy but I will still try to post these final 3/anything else fun we do/whenever I can!

We stuck around in Nashville this morning so we could get to the Hermitage, the former home of President Andrew Jackson. This was the main thing I wanted to see in Nashville, so I was glad we had the time and that it was so close to our hotel (read: easy to get to.) However we had to leave right after and get on over to Atlanta to make our hotel reservations. We plan to do some exploring/sightseeing in Georgia tomorrow on our way down to Florida as well, but we’re not sure what we want to see yet.

While we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside of Andrew Jackson’s actual home (and glass in front of the rooms would’ve prevented good pictures anyway) I was able to get a lot of pictures inside the museum and on the grounds, as well as some pictures of the exhibits/narratives about the general history of the location and the family. It was done in a Greek revival style and is really quite beautiful. Enjoy!

We did manage to stop in for lunch at Brewhaus for lunch in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was a German style gastropub and although we couldn’t have any beer because we had a long drive ahead, (disappointing), we did have some interesting food and there was a free pretzel check-in deal on Yelp, which is always nice. The pretzel was delicious, and came with 3 mustards which we shared.

Then my mom had a schnitzel sandwich that she enjoyed, with some German “potato salad” that she was not a fan of.

I had the smoked brat on a bun with cheddar & swiss cheese & bacon. It was really good and the spaetzle & mushrooms side that came with it was delicious. We ended up parking a few blocks away, but it was still free parking. However, there was definitely space in front of the restaurant. I just get paranoid when I’m driving in new places and jump on any free parking that I see.

We finally made it to Atlanta (geez that highway is scary) and are settling in and adjusting to the time difference. I just feel tired all the time at this point, and I’m not quite sure that’s adjusted enough.

Today we set off from Kansas City, Missouri to Nashville, Tennessee. We ended up driving through Illinois and Kentucky along the way. Such a long drive! We started off our morning with a quick trip to the historic city market for their Sunday farmer’s/flea market. So cute! Here are a few pictures of the area by our bed and breakfast followed by our shots of the market…

And it wouldn’t be complete without a glimpse of my outfit with the dress I bought at Free People on sale for $25 and my flea market J Crew necklace for $6.50, and the roadside scenery, and our momentous 50,000 mile marker.

We skimped on food today. After having breakfast @ the B&B we had lunch at Dairy Queen and ate in our room at the Hilton Homewood Suites since our room has a full kitchen. 🙂

The front desk girls even gave us a $25 BP giftcard after we talked to them a bit about our road trip. So sweet!

Finally, I leave you with a plant that my mom doubted the reality of, but yes, it is just that big.

We started off from South Sioux City today, leaving behind the lovely Marina Conference Center. It was a little hard to leave behind because it was so comfy, but fortunately we had vouchers for a free breakfast in their restaurant. I snapped a picture of the menu… I had the farmer’s breakfast with bacon and my mom had the banana nut French toast. We were both very full when we finished breakfast. Then we headed off toward Kansas City, Missouri.

We got into town later than we planned and settled into our charming room in the 1812 Bed & Breakfast. I took lots of pictures.

Some of the pictures didn’t turn out due to POOR LIGHTING. After we got settled we headed to dinner at Fiorella’s Jack Stack BBQ for some barbecue. We had the baby back rib, beef and ham plate and it was delicious. Our sides were bread, cheesy corn, a veggie kabob and baked beans.

We headed out to a park but it started raining so we went to the Plaza shopping center downtown which housed a variety of stores including my favorites (free people, anthropologie and urban outfitters). It also included a movie theater, restaurants and many sculptures. I really liked shopping there because everyone was dressed up. Very fun times.

After shopping we came back to the b&b and I hoped to get settled and go to sleep but this night was pretty much the worst so far and extremely frustrating. Through no fault of the place we are staying. *sigh*

In a little under 6 hours we made it to our first destination, visiting my grandparents in Eastern Washington. Hopefully we will be off to Montana tomorrow! We also found my favorite snack mix at a local grocery store (amazon.com no longer sells it) and I bought the entire stock (5 packages). I was so excited because now I don’t have to pay a ridiculous amount for shipping!